The ‘African Opera Village’ Turns Ten Three Perspectives on a Controversial Project in Burkina Faso

Summary

When one mentions ‘opera’ and ‘Africa’ together in Germany, most people immediately think of the work of German film and theatre director and controversial action artist Christoph Schlingensief (1960–2010) and his ‘African Opera Village’ project. This project began when he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2008 and he began a ‘cancer diary’ entitled So schön wie hier kanns im Himmel gar nicht sein (Heaven could never be as beautiful as here). In his diary recordings, Schlingensief recounts visiting his father's grave and vowing to build a church, a school, a hospital, a theatre and an opera house in Africa (2009: 17). This vow gained the aura of a ‘divine’ vision, one that cannot be taken back and has to be fulfilled, no matter where and when. Thus, his idea of the ‘African Opera Village’ was born. This chapter will consider the project's genesis, critically analyse its early ‘manifesto’ (2009), which contained an ‘extended opera concept’, and the implications for this manifesto for the encounter between Schlingensief and Burkina Faso; and finally assesses the effectiveness of the Opera Village as a dynamic cultural entity that would include the viewpoints and cultural expressions of neighbouring communities.

Schlingensief's vision is controversial, particularly insofar as it highlights ongoing neo-colonial perceptions and engagements with Africa, which Schlingensief, in the early stages of the project, seemed to see as some unified, romantic place that could heal and renew him as an individual and German opera as an art form. This was picked up by German journalists who often compared Schlingensief to the eponymous protagonist from Werner Herzog's 1982 film Fitzcarraldo to stress the bizarre and neocolonial character of the project. However, while Fitzcarraldo buys a steamboat to go deep into the Amazonas, with the aim of building an opera house and staging European grand operas in the midst of the Peruvian rainforest, Schlingensief was not interested in bringing elaborate stage spectacles to Africa. Instead, he aimed at creating a space for local artistic expressions in whichever form and genre they took, as part of his extended opera concept.